Böcker av Curt Leviant

With the lyrical joy and lighthearted wordplay that have won him critical acclaim, celebrated Jewish author Curt Leviant delivers a charming literary love story against the backdrop of the lush Italian countryside. In this enticing email romanza, Leviant delivers a breathless confessional with two beginnings and two endings, leaving it up to the reader to decipher what s real.

“A comedy of errors [and] bedroom farce” from an award-winning author critically acclaimed for his satiric stories of love and Jewish experience (Kirkus Reviews).   Reunited at their Jewish day school reunion, Guido and Charlie find themselves attracted to the same woman, a beautiful cellist named Aviva. Guido, a photographer, makes his move by going to Aviva for music lessons and soon enough, they become lovers. What Guido doesn’t know is that his friend Charlie, a psychologist, has taken Aviva as a client and is a party to the relationship through Aviva’s weekly confessions.    Written from the point of view of all three characters, with a swirl of delightful supporting characters and even a directory of footnotes that adds expansions, humor and surprises to the narrative, Diary of an Adulterous Woman is a highly entertaining look at desire, jealousy, the power of secrets and the all-too-human complications both longing and love can bring.

This award-winning novel is "a delightful, inventive tale" about the pursuit of love and literary fame from "a compassionate and witty satirist" (Kirkus Reviews). It's the opportunity of a lifetime for middle-aged Ezra Shultish--a chance to the meet his literary hero, Nobel Laureate Bar Nun, a writer Ezra has worshipped for most of his career as a teacher and translator. Hoping to get a recording of the author reading his story, The Yemenite Girl, Shultish travels to Israel, where he finds himself pursuing his own Yemenite girl, as well as the elusive author. But will Ezra get the girl--or his own glimpse of literary fame? Winner of the Edward Lewis Wallant Book Award, The Yemenite Girl is Curt Leviant's comic novel on the nature of celebrity and the relationship between life and art. "Shultish is a man with a life of his own. . . . And the celebrity, too, is remarkably drawn. . . . [The book] is done with great tact, feeling, and skill." --Saul Bellow, Pulitzer Prize- and Nobel Prize for Literature-winning author "A passionate story . . . The charm of the text and the intensity of the subtext is what keeps the pages turning." --The New York Times Book Review "Good comic writing and satire on the Hebrew literary scene with its jealous politicking for literary prizes." --The Washington Post

A humorous collection of love stories from an award-winning author who has been called "a compassionate and witty satirist" (Kirkus Reviews). From Holocaust survivors to Yiddish artists, a petty thief and a Polish shiksa with a passion for Jewish history, what unites the delectable characters in Curt Leviant's witty collection of romantic tales is the universal desire for love and admiration. With settings as various as the Deep South, Boston, New York, Italy, Israel, each story is a wry look at romantic pursuit, each relationship as unique as the lovers themselves. Whether or not love succeeds for Leviant's all-too-human characters, the journey is always filled with humor and heart.

Filled with Curt Leviant's signature blend of humor and drama, these two enchanting and original novellas lure readers into a dazzling storybook world. "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Original Music of the Hebrew Alphabet" is set in Budapest during the Communist era. The story focuses on the tenuous seesaw between Dr. Isaac Gantz, a musicologist, and engineer Ferdinand Friedman, a Holocaust survivor who believes that he possesses one of the greatest manuscripts of the ages, a Rosetta Stone of Judaica. Friedman is willing to share it--but there is a "but." In pursuing this prize, Gantz enters a world of strange human relationships filled with doubts and surprises. A vibrant cast of characters adds dimension to this gripping story in which Jewish folklore, music, and history coalesce. "Weekend in Mustara" unfolds on the fictional island of Mustara in southern Europe, a mountainous, totalitarian country that tolerates Judaism. Its few Jews cling to their heritage, embodied in their beautiful but sparsely attended synagogue and their museum, where a great memorial book is inscribed with the names of all Mustara Jews martyred during World War II. A scholar of medieval Hebrew manuscripts comes to the island, searching for traces of Yehuda Halevi, the great Hebrew poet of the Spanish Golden Age. He is soon enmeshed among elusive personalities and tangled loyalties, but only when he finds himself displaced in time--in a kind of theater of the absurd--are the purposes of his journey finally realized.

In Venice, the narrator meets two women, one a devout and sensual Parisian, the other, an enigmatic beauty, who is mute but can hear. At the wedding--whoever bride may be--a 17th century rabbi will preside. For in this true fiction, characters cross time lines.Fiction. Jewish Studies.